Is the Christmas feeling slowly dying?

For some, the robust scent of a pine tree alone is enough to get catapult right into the Christmas mood. It happens to all of us, only the trigger varies. It’s also probably the reason we have such a hard time encapsulating it in a broader definition. There is, though, one thing we can all agree on. The so-called “Christmas feeling” often brings to the surface small fragment of recollections from childhood years. Your dad breaking up a sweat over that rusty tree stand; the excitement of your siblings around presents; mom’s traditional fruit cake plus the tummy ache that usually followed it.

But in the recent years, a collective fear of losing this comforting feeling has been built up and many fingers are pointed at extreme commercialization of this holy holiday. Scientists confirm this theory. 

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According to a 2013 Pew Research Center study conducted among a sample of 2,000 adults, 33% of Americans are bothered by the materialism of Christmas and constant pressure to spend money on gifts. There’s plenty of evidence that retailers push the start of Christmas shopping season earlier each year. At this pace, stockings will be displayed on shelves in June and by August the malls will be playing carols.

But is it really fair to hold a grudge against retail giants for sucking the joy out of a religious celebration? As this Slate article explains, they have been way ahead of “Christmas Rush” since Victorian era (the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901). "KEEP IT IN MIND! It is needless to remind you that CHRISTMAS IS COMING, But we want everybody who intends purchasing CHRISTMAS PRESENTS to comprehend that we are now all ready ... ", read a Nov. 19, 1885, ad by South Carolina retailer Wilhite & Wilhite. That was over a hundred years ago.

So sure, the pressure to splurge more is real, but is not the only hitch. Ironically, people fail to remember what the whole point of Christmas is - even as they hung a baby Jesus decoration in their Christmas tree or fill out their Pinterest boards with DIY angel crafts. Doing so gets them in the “mood”, they believe. 

Other thing that seems to do the trick? Being religious. According to a more recent Pew Research Center study, “Americans who attend religious services regularly are more enthusiastic about the various activities associated with the holiday season than are those who attend worship services less often”. Unfortunately, not many benefit from this

The previous year, Pew psychologists concluded: merely 51 percent of Americans viewed Christmas as more of a religious holiday than cultural. In other words, they don’t go to church or pray much. 

Also, only a small fraction of Christmas traditions had been passed on to the current generation. “Fewer Americans say they will send holiday cards this year than say their families typically did this when they were children. The share of people who plan to go caroling this year also is lower than the share who says they typically did so as children. And while about seven-in-ten Americans say they typically attended Christmas Eve or Christmas Day religious services when they were children, 54% say they plan to attend Christmas services this year”, show the researchers. 
On top of this, adults “like to believe they believed in Santa longer that they actually did,” writes Atlantic journalist, Olga Khazan referring to an AP poll from 2011. 

In the process of growing up, it seems, the holiday’s spirit wore off – kids nowadays know more about Santa then they know about God. But hope is peeking through all this gloomy statistics – and it involves sugary treats. As two Danish researchers found out in 2012, Christmas spirit is not just a “Hallmark holiday” side-effect. “This feeling arises even without pharmacological assistance, although consumption of pastries and hot drinks help sustain that feeling,” the authors mention.

It sounds like a trip to your local Dunkin' Donuts may be required to get you into a jolly mood. Just make sure to bring the whole family with you.

In their 2002 essay called “What Makes for A Merry Christmas?” psychologists Tim Kasser and Kennon M. Sheldon locked closely at how people respond to different Christmas activities – like spending time with family, decorating a tree, shopping – and measure their happiness levels. Turns out, “people who focus on the materialistic aspects of the season are probably less involved with the family and religious experiences that could bring them greater joy." More than that, Kasser and Sheldon say, going for materialistic goals is more stressful, not to mention little rewarding. Interestingly enough, being Eco-friendly offers us more joy. “We found that individuals who engaged in more environmentally friendly consumption behaviors were more satisfied during the holiday”.

The takeaway is pretty clear: “Christmas feeling” comes as a result of a conscious effort of being more emotionally and spiritually engaged. It’s OK to indulge in fancy gifts, but don’t put Amazon or eBay at the core of your Christmas spirit. Do things which comfort the heart. Say a prayer, give a hug, pay for someone’s meal, have a snowball fight, reread with your kids the story of baby Jesus. Be truly merry.

The free time dillema. Are we doing it wrong?

Whenever I catch myself watching TV or browsing the Internet on my days off, I can’t help but feel like I'm smashing with a hammer a very precious cargo. Most days I end up wasting time trying to figure out what to do with it. It has to be something meaningful and intelligent with just the right amount of fun, that would leave me feeling both productive and refreshed.

Nine times out of ten, weekends exhaust me more than the work week in itself.

Those two days are jam-packed with workouts, reading sessions, museum and theater visits. To top it off, my husband and I split cleaning and meal preparation duties. There are days though, when all I want is to linger in bed, binge-watch TV shows on Netflix and eat Twinkies. Here’s the rub: they turn me into a ball of anxiety. How can this add value to my life? Am I properly nourishing my intellect? Maybe I should read a book or do some strength training instead; I heard it can prevent osteoporosis. Apparently, this is a common issue among people of my age.

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After seeing their parents making poor decision about pretty much everything from health to finances, Millennials, those born between 1982 and 2004, don’t allow themselves to take breaks from self-development.

At times, it may seem all they do is stare at a smartphone, but studies show they are avid readers as well, with an average of ten books devoured per year. Additionally, they love to max out free time by traveling. According to a nationwide survey by PGAV Destinations called “Meet the Millennials”, 58% say they travel for leisure with friends – 20 percent more than older generations. Knowledge is once again factored in when planning for a trip. “They do not take leisure trips ‘just because,’ but are looking for something that resonates with their need to make a difference,” explains Mike Konzen, Principal, PGAV Destinations.

Dress codes are the only reason Millennials tend to shy away from museums. “They don’t know if it’s appropriate to wear jeans,” said Meryl Levitz of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation in a Forbes article.

But no matter how enlightening such activities can be, regardless of age, our brains sometimes demand a hefty dose of plain old fun. Researchers from Direct Line Insurance discovered that, in order to be happy, we need seven hours of free time a day. Since this doesn’t jibe with real-life hectic schedules, they came up with a more flexible plan. It allows for one hour of TV watching, 18 minutes each for checking social media and online perusing plus a little over an hour of extra personal time. In other words, you truly can have your cake and eat it too.

Besides, playtime is not only enjoyable, but crucial for emotional development since early childhood. Peter Gray, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Boston College thinks that “adults who did not have the opportunity to experience moderately challenging emotional situations during play are more at risk for feeling anxious and overwhelmed by emotion-provoking situations in adult life”.

The U.S. hourly payment system doesn’t do much to ease adulthood's angst about off days. “Time is money”, a saying deeply ingrained in our collective belief system, urges us to be productive even when we should take it easy.

Women, especially, have trouble enjoying their leisure time. “The meaning of free time for men and women are quite different. Among mothers, free time may be too entangled with care-giving to be the ‘pause that refreshes,’” thinks Liana Sayer, assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University and co-author of the study about gender differences regarding free time perception.

Conversely, in the last decade, more and more companies started to adopt friendly time management policies to avoid overworking their employees. Hubspot, Ask.com or Glasdoor, for example, offer unlimited vacation days to their workers. Others, like Expensify, spoil employees with exotic trips to expensive retreats and let’s not forget about Boogie; they embraced the 4-days work week model. These kinds of perks translates in low levels of stress and better productivity, which goes to show relaxation is a necessity, not a whim.

So what’s the best way to spend free time anyway? One must turn to psychologist in order to find the answer. Their latest discoveries speak volumes: go to concerts, trips, take piano lessons; invest in experiences. An article publish in the journal Psychological Science in September revealed that experiences bring people more happiness than possessions, in part thanks to the anticipation factor. “You can think about waiting for a delicious meal at a nice restaurant and how different that feels from waiting for, say, your pre-ordered iPhone to arrive," the authors explained.

Basically, what they are saying is, next time you have some free time on your hands, use it wisely. Go out and do something you think would make a great memory one month or five years from now.

Who can tame the customer service monster?

When we first got to America, four months ago, my husband feared that our savings might run out too fast, so he took the first job he could find. He worked full-time as a merchandiser for a national retail chain and though the payment was lousy, something else made his days at work unbearable. The extreme worship of customers. 
 

“They are taking customer services too far”, he told me one night, at the dinner table. I didn’t know what to say. After living my whole life in an ex-communist country where returning policies were basically non-existent, I was delighted to be treated like royalty whenever I purchased something, no matter how inexpensive. But I was about to change my mind. 

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My husband’s employer had a skewed manner to stimulate its staff. Three times a day, my husband was required to take part in team meetings, a masquerade really. They were given candy and instructed to cheer and clap as the team leader enthusiastically talked about “vibing with the guests”. In other words, stalking clients in the name of perfect costumer service. 

Freshly brainwashed, they were encouraged to go on their day like construction workers from Lego Movie did, with a giant, dumb smile on their faces. Maybe even humming the “Everything is awesome” song. Not fun. And totally ineffective. Instead of building enthusiasm, they were depleting it.

In many ways, this customer service training approach harms us all, clients and retail workers as well. The frustration felt by employees each time they are force to drop whatever they are doing and hunt down people who just want a carton of milk snowballed into a much greater damage. Customers started acting like spoiled brats. They are no longer asking, they demand. And a sense of rude ownership took place to their common sense. Mountains of returned products are collected each day by the retail employees, who first have to clean the mess people leave behind. 

I was a witness of all this one night, when I happened to step into a popular clothing store near the closing hours. Dozens of pairs of shoes sprawled on the floor, right next to their empty boxes; clothing racks bursting with tangled hangers. It looked like a tornado hit the store minutes earlier. What shocked me the most was seeing people shopping careless, blind to the clutter disaster surrounding them. No one was trying to pick something up. After all, they did exactly what retail chains got them used to do. They were the mighty Costumer. 

But since when being attune with a natural instincts of cleaning your own mess is a violation of customer etiquette? Just like Rome, this self-absorbed image of a typical American costumer as we know it wasn’t built in a day, rather than decades.

For starters, the 80’s brought in the industrial revolution and thus the need for customer service teams. Companies came up with ideas to reward loyalty and to measure buyer’s levels of satisfaction; Coca-Cola released the first discount coupon. All this expanded with the launched of Internet, in the early 90’s. Nowadays, even the modest companies have a person in charge with social media, also known as the dead seat considering the huge volume of complains released online. 

A survey conducted by The Social Habit, a well-known social media research group, shows 42% of people who ever contacted a brand for costumer support via Twitter or Facebook expected a response within 60 minutes. Furthermore, 57% expect the same speed of response at night and during weekends.

On the other hand, we have a ridiculous number of stories about costumers who successfully returned soiled clothes simply because they were allowed to do so. In the last years though, famous department stores like Bloomingdales have taken measures to corrected breaches in their return policies and put an end to “wardrobing”.

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That’s not to say retailers must treat buyers like burglars or that they should obliterate return rules all together. It may be them who opened the Pandora box, but costumers have the power to seal it off for good. Particularly Millennials. 

A handful of surveys performed by Luxury Institute revealed Millennials (people in their mid-twenties, who make up about 25 percent of the U.S. workforce) gravitate towards user-friendly return policies, but don’t exploit them. They are also on a budget, which forces them to think twice when purchasing something. They don’t care much about overly friendly cashiers or servers; they look for efficiency. In fact, while they browse around retail store, most of their actual shopping is done online, shows research by Accenture, a management consulting company.

Possibly the most revealing study about Millennials’s buying behavior was conducted earlier this year, by The Intelligence Group.

Instead of spending on things they don’t need or can’t afford, this complex breed prefers renting everything from movies to cars and houses. If they do make a purchase, they don’t return it; they sell it on EBay. “They watched their parents work, work, work, buy the big house, and then lose their pension and have it taken away from them. They’re looking at that model and thinking, ‘I want to do this differently,’” says Jamie Gutfreund, chief strategy officer of the Intelligence Group.

If he's right, let’s hope Millennials get along with their parents. Because those Target and Walmart employees could really use a break from being real-life Lego Movie characters.